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| Type | Public (NASDAQ: NTAP) |
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| Founded | 1992 |
| Headquarters |  Sunnyvale, California, USA |
| Key people | Dan Warmenhoven, CEO Tom Mendoza, Vice Chairman Tom Georgens, President and COO Steve Gomo, CFO David Hitz, Executive Vice President (EVP) & Founder Steve Kleiman, Chief Scientist James Lau, EVP, Founder, and Chief Strategy Officer Brian Pawlowski, Chief Technical Officer |
| Industry | Data storage devices |
| Products | FAS2000, FAS3000, FAS6000, NetApp Manageability Software Family, NearStore, NearStore VTL, Decru DataFort, Information Server, V-Series, StoreVault, Performance Acceleration Module |
| Revenue |  $4 billion USD (FY 2008) |
| Employees | 7999 (Aug 2008) |
| Website | www.netapp.com |
NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP), formerly Network Appliance, Inc., is a proprietary computer storage and data management company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. It is a member of the NASDAQ-100 and ranks on the Fortune 1000. NetApp is credited with the widespread adoption of network-attached storage (NAS) architecture, as opposed to more costly storage area network (SAN), and is currently under attack from popular open source offerings (such as Sun Microsystems' ZFS).
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History
NetApp was founded in 1992 by David Hitz, James Lau, and Michael Malcolm [1] [2]. At the time, its major competitor was Auspex. In 1994, NetApp received venture capital funding from Sequoia Capital [3]. It had its initial public offering in 1995. NetApp thrived in the internet bubble years of the mid 1990s to 2001, during which the company grew to $1 billion in annual revenue. After the bubble burst, NetApp's revenues quickly declined to $800 million in its fiscal year 2002. Since then, the company's revenues have steadily climbed.
Filers
The line of NetApp filers was the company's flagship since the very beginning. A filer is a type of disk storage device which owns and controls a filesystem, and presents files and directories to hosts over the network. This scheme is sometimes called file storage, as opposed to the block storage that has been traditionally provided by major storage vendors like EMC Corporation and Hitachi Data Systems.
NetApp's filers initially used NFS and CIFS protocols based on standard local area networks (LANs), whereas block storage consolidation required costly storage area networks (SANs) implemented with the Fibre Channel (FC) protocol. In 2002, in an attempt to increase market share, NetApp added block storage access as well. Today, NetApp systems support it via FC protocol, the iSCSI protocol, and the emerging Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) protocol.
The filers use NetApp's proprietary operating system called Data ONTAP (with code originally copied from Berkeley Net/2 BSD Unix[4]). Data ONTAP originally only supported NFS, but CIFS, iSCSI and Fibre Channel were later added ("Unified Storage" concept model). Today, NetApp provides two variants of Data ONTAP. Data ONTAP 7G and a nearly complete rewritecitation needed called Data ONTAP GX, based upon grid technology acquired from Spinnaker Networks. In closest future these software product lines will be merged into one OS - Data ONTAP 8: into classical OS Data ONTAP 7G will be added a global grid-type clustering options from GX and other GX's features.
In 2006, NetApp launched a Virtual Tape Library (VTL) product for magnetic tape data storage virtualization.citation needed
In 2007 NetApp introduced its own proprietary deduplication technology: A-SIS (Advanced Single Instance Store), available for all NetApp filers.citation needed
Major acquisitions
- 1997 - Internet Middleware (IMC). IMC's web proxy caching software became the NetCache product line (which was resold in 2006).
- 2004 - Spinnaker Networks, Inc. The technology Spinnaker brought to NetApp was integrated into Data ONTAP GX and first released in 2006.
- 2005 - Alacritus The tape virtualization technology Alacritus brought to NetApp was integrated into the NetApp NearStore Virtual Tape Library (VTL) product line, introduced in 2006.
- 2005 - Decru. Decru continues to operate as a separate business for data encryption appliances.
- 2006 - Topio. Software that helps replicate, recover, and protect data over any distance regardless of the underlying server or storage infrastructure. This technology became known as ReplicatorX.
- 2008 - Onaro. Storage service management software which helps customers manage storage more efficiently with guaranteed service levels for availability and performance.
Major divestitures
- 2006 - NetCache product line sold to Blue Coat Systems, Inc.
Controversy
NetCache and its uses
The NetCache software formerly produced by NetApp is used in Tunisia to censor Internet access. Technically, censorship in Tunisia uses a transparent proxy that processes every HTTP request sent out and filters out sites based on hostnames. Empirical evidence shows that NetApp hardware was used to implement the controls. [5]
Legal dispute with Sun Microsystems
In September 2007, NetApp initiated proceedings against Sun Microsystems, claiming that the ZFS File System developed by Sun infringed its patents. [6] The following month, Sun announced plans to countersue based on alleged misuse by NetApp of Sun's own patented technology [7].
Since the announcement of the original litigation, the majority of NetApp's patents have been sent through a reexamination process by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), with prior art assembled and contributed via an outpouring of support from the open source community.
Competition
NetApp competes in the Data Storage Devices industry[8]. NetApp ranks third in market capitalization in its industry, behind EMC Corporation and Seagate Technology, and ahead of Western Digital, Brocade, Data Domain, Imation, Quantum, and Isilon [9]. In total revenue, NetApp ranks fourth behind EMC, Seagate, Western Digital, and ahead of Imation, Brocade, Xyratex, and Hutchinson Technology [10]. Note that these lists of competitors do not include companies with significant storage businesses, such as Hewlett Packard, IBM, Hitachi Data Systems, Dell, and Sun Microsystems.
Work environment
NetApp also has a long history of making "Best Places to Work" lists. In 2008 the company ranked 14th on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For. This is the sixth consecutive year NetApp has earned a spot on the list, placing in the top 50 each time. NetApp also earned top honors in the "Best Companies to Work for in Research Triangle Park" competition in 2006. Other previous distinctions include making ComputerWorld's "Top 100 Places to Work in IT 2005", "Best Places to Work" in the Greater Bay Area in 2006 by the San Francisco Business Times and the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, and the 8th spot on the 2006 list of "Best Workplaces in Germany" by Capital Magazine.
See also
- NetApp filer
- Write Anywhere File Layout (WAFL), used in NetApp systems
- EMC Corporation, a competitor
References
- ^ "Management". NetApp (Retrieved 2007-09-06).
- ^ "Michael Malcolm Resigns as Chairman of the Board of CacheFlow to Focus on New Start-Up Opportunity". Find Articles (2000, Retrieved 2007-09-06).
- ^ "Sequoia Capital funds NetApp".
- ^ "Is Data ONTAP Based On UNIX?" (2007-04-27).
- ^ Beaupré, Antoine (2005-11-23). "Comment la Tunisie censure l'internet".
- ^ "NetApp files patent suit against Sun" (September 5, 2007).
- ^ "Sun plans to countersue NetApp" (October 24, 2007).
- ^ "Industry Center - Data Storage Devices". Yahoo (Retrieved 2007-09-06).
- ^ "Industry Center - Data Storage Devices, Leaders in Market Capitalization". Yahoo (Retrieved 2007-09-06).
- ^ "Industry Center - Data Storage Devices, Leaders in Total Revenue (ttm)". Yahoo (Retrieved 2007-09-06).
External links
- NetApp
- StoreVault
- Decru
- Blue Coat Systems & Netcache
- IDC Press Releases:
- The NetApp Effect on Apple's ZFS Plans, IT Business Edge, October 2007
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